Super trooper

Everyone stay calm: Super Blunko's here. It's a message the former Home Secretary is peddling with ever greater urgency to friends in the media. Not only has the erstwhile Clint Eastwood of the Home Office taken it upon himself to turn up uninvited to meetings of the Cobra committee, the body responsible for coordinating the UK's response to terrorism, he's also putting it around that he occasionally fills in for Chas Clarke, much to the burly one's annoyance. Nevertheless, a nation sleeps easy, safe in the knowledge that Super Blunko is ever vigilant.

· The denizens of Notting Hill are frothing at the mouth over plans for one of their locals, The Hill Gate, to extend its opening hours. Leading the assault is Lord Lamont, who fears the area will be transformed into something akin to Sodom and Gomorrah if the boozer stays open longer. This is curious for two reasons. One: Pendennis would have thought the former Tory Chancellor, a man for whom the words 'laissez faire' hold an almost erotic appeal, would endorse moves to deregulate the leisure industry. And two: Lamont has hitherto been myopic on such parochial matters, to the extent he once failed to realise he was renting out his house to a dominatrix called Miss Whiplash.

· No surprise the Daily Mail devoted a spread to a moan about Britain going to the dogs. But there were raised eyebrows that the author of the diatribe was ageing glamourpuss, Joan Collins who condemned 'the lack of respect and manners' and 'the awful pervasive disregard that we have for civility today'. Surely this can't be the same Joan Collins who, in 1987, called a British Airways supervisor a 'f***ing old cow' after being downgraded to club class?

· Philandering Jude Law's halo has slipped further, judging by his recent appearance at Camden Town's Sainsbury's, where he was shooting a scene for Anthony Minghella's new film, Breaking and Entering. Jane Havell, 24, was plucked from the supermarket staff to scan in shopping as cameras fixed on Law. But Havell preferred bearded tubster Minghella to svelte Jude. 'I wouldn't say I'm a fan, but I guess he's a good-looking bloke,' she conceded. 'Anthony Minghella was lovely. He was really chatty and down-to-earth.'

· Pendennis has rumbled David Davis's secret weapon in his Tory leadership bid: fellow shadow front bencher, Andrew Mitchell, who has an arrangement with wine merchant El Vino (founded by his father and uncle), which gives him hefty discounts. As cases of champers are traditionally used to lubricate the undecided during leadership contests, Davis can do so at about half the cost to his rivals.

· Leafing through Why I am Still a Catholic, a collection of essays by the great and the good, Pendennis is drawn to Cherie Booth's meditation on her faith. 'I had loved history at school and would have liked to study it at university, but thought that would inevitably mean I'd end up being a teacher waiting to be asked to be a Catholic wife and mother. So I chose law, as much, I suspect, to annoy the nuns as anything.' The Reformation's loss is the world of employment law's gain.

· The recent sexual shenanigans at the Spectator are benefiting a venerable institution located in the spiritual heartland of the magazine's nemesis, New Labour. Pendennis understands the King's Head Theatre in Islington, currently home to Who's the Daddy?, a juicy romp chronicling the lubricious liaisons among the mag's senior staff, is set to make around £100,000 from the play. Even better, it gets 1 per cent of the royalties if the play hits the West End. Pendennis suggest regulars might want to raise a glass to Boris, Petsy, Rod, Kimberley ...